Federal Reserve Economic Data

The FRED Blog makes every attempt to offer right-off-the-vine FRED data, from the prices paid by consumers for strawberries, grapes, and bananas to the prices received by producers for apples and oranges. And today’s graph harvests a similar set of data with a focus on freshness.

The graph shows the proportion of consumer expenditures on fresh fruit (in orange) and fresh vegetables (in green) relative to their processed counterparts.

Consumers steadily spend almost twice as much on fresh vegetables as they do on the processed kind—a pattern that has been nearly constant between 1984 and 2019.

The appetite for fresh fruit has steadily grown since 2001: Between 1984 and 2001, consumers spent almost one and a half times more on fresh fruit than they spent on processed fruit. At the turn of the decade, that proportion started to increase and, as of 2019, stood at almost three times as much.

Consider the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s resources when planning your diet. Don’t forget to eat your fruits and vegetables, but also be sure to add a hearty serving of fresh FRED data. We hear it’s high in fiber.

How this graph was created: Search for and select “Expenditures: Fresh Fruits: All Consumer Units.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Edit Line 1” tab to customize the data by searching for and selecting “Expenditures: Processed Fruits: All Consumer Units.” Next, create a custom formula to combine the series by typing in a/b and clicking “Apply.” For the second line, repeat the same steps with the series “Expenditures: Fresh Vegetables: All Consumer Units” and “Expenditures: Processed Vegetables: All Consumer Units.” To change the line colors, use the choices in the “Format” tab.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Every April, the FRED Blog dons its party hat and celebrates FRED’s birthday. This year, FRED turns the big 3-0. In lieu of a cake with candles, we present…what else? A data graph!

The scatter plot graph above shows the number of data series (in thousands) accessible through the FRED website and the number of persons visiting the website (in millions) for every year between 2009 and 2020. We’re sorry we can’t show you data all the way back to 1991, when FRED was born. The source of the data on website visitors is Google Analytics and Google didn’t even exist back then.

The graph tells a story of remarkable growth. In just the past 11 years, FRED has added roughly 756,000 series to its database and attracted more than 8 million new users to its website. The public appetite for data is strong, so here’s our toast to the next 30 years of FRED: May the correlation between data series and website visits remain positive and close to one!

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo, Maria Arias, and Keith Taylor.

The FRED Blog has looked at consumer comforts before: the seasonal increases in electricity use for cozy heating and cooling and the prices of homemade foods. Today we devote our post to, arguably, the most comforting childhood tradition: milk and cookies.

The FRED graph above shows consumer expenditures on milk and cream (in white) and on bakery products (in chocolate chip cookie brown). We’ve adjusted the nominal value of those dollar figures by their corresponding consumer price item index to compare them over time. As it happens, households spend, on average, about twice as much on baked goods as they do on milk and cream.

We’ll also be looking for suitable data alternatives for our readers who avoid gluten and lactose. For now, try dunking your favorite baked good in your favorite rich, savory beverage while reading the FRED Blog. We hope both experiences bring you similar levels of comfort.

How this graph was created: Search for and select “Expenditures: Fresh Milk and Cream: All Consumer Units.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Edit Line 1” tab to customize the data by searching for and selecting “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Dairy and Related Products in U.S. City Average.” Next, create a custom formula to combine the series by typing in a/b*100 and clicking “Apply.” For the second line, repeat the same steps with the series “Expenditures: Bakery Products: All Consumer Units” and “Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Cereals and Bakery Products in U.S. City Average.” To change the line colors, use the choices in the “Format” tab.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.